James D. Martin

James Douglas Martin (1 September 1918-30 October 2017) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-AL 7) from 3 January 1965 to 3 January 1967, succeeding Carl Elliott and preceding Tom Bevill. His 1962 campaign for the US Senate against the Democrat J. Lister Hill the first serious showing by a Republican in Alabama since Reconstruction.

Biography
James Douglas Martin was born in Tarrant, Alabama in 1918, and he began working in the petroleum industry in 1937. He commanded a US Army artillery battery in George S. Patton's US Third Army during World War II, and he became an oil products distributor upon his return to the United States. He was originally a conservative Democrat, but he switched to the Republican Party in 1962 in order to challenge US Senator J. Lister Hill. Martin was an ultra-conservative and segregationist, and he led a new breed of southern Republicans in an insurgency comparable to that of the Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election. During the 1962 US Senate election, Martin attacked the Kennedy administration, but this issue was overshadowed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, which allowed for the interventionist Lister Hill to win re-election against the isolationist Martin. However, Martin's popularity was sufficient enough for him to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 1964. In 1965, he denounced Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Selma to Montgomery marches, and he lost re-election in 1967.